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Looking at life through rose-colored glasses

Kathy Lilje

May 28, 2014

Storytelling is a gift that many people in my family enjoy. They don’t call it lying and it is never done to be malicious — just colorful. My husband has an entertaining repertoire of stories that sound like they can’t possibly be true — but they are.

My father had a line of malarky that covered every subject. He was also a very wise man who mastered many subjects. So it was a little hard to decipher where the truth ended and the Joe Dreschelisms began. Even now, after he’s been gone almost two decades, I sometimes state a fact as told to me by my Dad and then realize that I better check it before I act like an authority on the subject.

Luckily, the conversational abilities that made him so much fun have been passed down to many of his grandchildren. This being said, when my daughter and I were working on a project together and she started telling me you can buy eyeglasses for chickens, I was a little skeptical.

I was sure she was pulling my leg and snickering that I was sort of buying that crazy story. Finally she said, “If you don’t believe me, look it up”

I did and it’s true.

Apparently if a chicken sees blood on another chicken, he goes into a crazed frenzy of pecking, kicking and ultimately, cannibalizing the other chicken. In fact, a whole group will victimize one chicken when they see a little blood on him (or her) — sort of like rival gangs of thugs, the Beaks and the Scratchers.

In 1903, Andrew Jackson Jr. of Munich, Tenn., found a solution to the gang violence bestowed on his prized poultry. He decided if the chickens couldn’t see the blood, they wouldn’t be compelled to attack. So he invented rose-colored glasses for the feisty fowl.

It worked and many of his barnyard buddies were grateful for his invention. Thus, the phrase “looking at the world through rose-colored glasses” was born. By the way, I’m not sure that last sentence is true. Better look it up.